Foreign Correspondence brings together six photographic projects portraying the cities of Buenos Aires, Guatemala, Havana, Medellin, Monterrey and Panama - a selection indicative of the cultural and geographical diversity of Latin America.

While a written description of a place can originate entirely in the imagination (travel writers who never travelled are not uncommon) a photographic survey results from the direct engagement of a photographer. The principal challenge of representing a city lies in identifying the political, social, and economic markers embedded in ordinary spaces whose very familiarity can make them imperceptible to those who experience them daily.

The makers of these pictures share the stance of outsiders, invested in understanding the complexity of their adopted surroundings. They utilize a range of visual resources, from the seemingly objective typology to the lyrical snapshot, as a way of establishing a critical dialogue with the history of the medium and its documentary impulse. The exhibition contests the assumption that a foreign view is inevitably imposing or naive; pondering instead what is gained and lost by distinct attempts to make visible the social and ecological impact of the built environment on everyday lives.

Alejandro Cartagena
Ferit Kuyas
Tom Griggs
Thomas Locke Hobbs
Irina Rozovsky
Arturo Soto